but before he actually was gathered to his people, and while the recent extermination of this guilty nation must have been fresh in his mind, he proceeds to pronounce a parting blessing on the tribes. Now it is singular, and except upon some such supposition as this I am maintaining, unaccountable, that whilst he deals out the bounties of earth and heaven with a prodigal hand upon all the others, the tribe of Simeon he passes over in silence, and none but the tribe of Simeon-for this he has no blessing*-an omission which should seem

* Deuteronomy, xxxiii. 6. It is nothing but fair to state that the reading of the Codex Alexandr. is rw Ρουβὴν καὶ μὴ ἀποθανέτω, καὶ Συμεὼν ἔστω πολὺς ἐν ἀριθμῷ. "Let Reuben live and not die, and let Simeon be many in number." This reading, however, the Codex Vaticanus, the rival MS. of the Alexandrine, and at least its equal in authority, does not recognise : neither is it found in the Hebrew text, nor in any of the various readings of that text as given by Dr. Kennicott-nor in

to have some meaning, and which does in fact, as I apprehend, point to this same matter of Baal-Peor. For if that was preeminently the offending tribe, nothing could be more likely than that Moses, fresh, as I have said, from the destruction of the Midianites for their sin, should remember their principal partners in it too, and should think it hard measure to slay the one, and forthwith bless the other. Nor can I help remarking, in further support of this conjecture, that the little consideration paid to

the Samaritan-nor in the early Versions. It is difficult to believe that the name of Simeon should have been omitted in so many instances by mistake; whilst it is easy to suppose that it might have been introduced in some one instance by design, the transcriber not aware of any cause for the exclusion of this one tribe, and saying, "Peradventure, it is an oversight." Moreover, the blessing of Reuben thus curtailed, "Let Reuben live, and not die," seems tame, and unworthy the party and the occasion.

this tribe by their brethren shortly afterwards, in the allotment of the portions of the Holy Land, implies it to have been in disgrace their inheritance being only the remnant of that assigned to the children of Judah, which was too much for them;* and so inadequate to their wants did it prove, that in after-times they sent forth a colony even to Mount Seir.

Admitting, then, the fact to be as I have supposed, it supports (as in so many other cases already mentioned) the credibility of a miracle. For the name of the audacious offender points incidentally to the offending tribe-the extraordinary diminution of that tribe points to some extraordinary cause of the diminution --the pestilence presents itself as a probable cause-and if the real

* Joshua, xix. 9.

cause, then it becomes the judicial punishment of a transgression, a miracle wrought by God (as Moses would have it), in token that his wrath was kindled against Israel.

CONCLUSION.

HERE, then, I make an end; not that I believe the subject exhausted, for I doubt not that many examples of coincidence without design in the writings of Moses have escaped me, which others may detect, as one eye will often see what another has overlooked. Still I cannot account for the number and nature of those which I have been able to produce on any other principle than the veracity of the narrative which presents them;-accident could not have touched upon truth so often-design could not have touched upon it so artlessly; the less so, because these coincidences do not discover themselves in certain detached and isolated passages, but break out from time to time as the history proceeds, runningwitnesses (as it were) to the accuracy not